Brush up on the history of the Civil War at 3 p.m. Sunday at Murphy Auditorium in Rockwell Hall where Civil War apparel will be exhibited and the School of Music will perform civil war melodies.

“The museum has a beautiful exhibit of Civil War costumes right now to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War,” said Jane Dressler, artistic coordinator for the performance and a professor in the school of music. “They have clothing, jewelry and photos from the Civil War years.”

Dressler said after seeing the clothing in the museum she was inspired to pick the music.

“Richard Devore is a member of music theory faculty and one of his specialties is American music,” Dressler said. “He and I went through and picked all the songs that we thought would make a good program and then I went through and chose students according to the songs.”

A total of 18 songs have been selected and broken into three groups: songs of the states, songs of the soldiers and songs of home. Dressler said there are four performers and four instrumentalists.

Hannah Jencius, a senior music major and performer in the event, did the research for the program notes.

“I worked with Dr. Devore and looked at a lot of texts and I looked at scores,” Jencius said. “I tried to find something interesting to say about each piece. Some talk about the text of the song, some talk about the composition style. It was interesting to read about battles or things that I had learned about in my history courses from a different perspective.”

People are encouraged to visit the exhibit as a part of the experience. Admission is free and open to the public.

Contact Megan Confer at [email protected].